“At least stay long enough to help me respond to some emails,” he said in a rush. “My assistant let everyone know I’d be only working part time for a while, but there are a couple of projects I need to follow up on, and my fingers are aching from the stuff I did earlier today.”
When she didn’t respond, he continued, saying, “I’m talking about kids needing malaria shots, struggling families needing homes, scholarships needing approval. You know, charity stuff. Courant Foundation stuff. My job.” When her expression didn’t change, Theo threw in a layer of guilt. “Orphaned puppies, Chessie.”
Her shoulders drooped and she shook her head from side to side, slowly, illustrating her absolute disbelief that he’d use puppies to make her help him.
Finally she answered, saying, “Fine. Point me in the direction of your cell phone. Never let it be said that Chessie Gibson refused to help orphaned puppies.”
* * *
Over two hours passed before Chessie hit the “send” button to transmit the final email. The quiet crackling of a log burning in the fireplace was suddenly interrupted by twelve chimes from the grandfather clock in the hall. Midnight. She let out a long, low whistle, amazed at all they’d done that night. What Theo did for a living impressed her. More to the point, Theo had impressed her.
Actually, Theo had not only impressed her, she realized, he’d inspired her, too. She hadn’t known much about what he did with his life, besides work for his family’s foundation. All she’d known of his job was that he traveled the world seeking big-time donors and that he handed out money right and left. She’d always thought of him as some do-gooder, doling out his extra cash to those below him.
A smile swept across her lips. What she hadn’t known was that Theo handled many of the charitable distributions personally. And he took them personally, too. Half the emails she’d helped him return were from current or former Courant Foundation recipients, all eager to tell Theo of their current success. The responses he’d dictated to Chessie had been cheery, personal. It had been obvious to her that Theo had a personal and real relationship with each and every one of the charitable recipients. The fifteen emails she’d typed out and multiple texts had made that clear.
He’d lied, though. There’d been no orphaned puppies, but there had been a foster kid who’d fallen in love with a puppy. Two quick emails from Theo and the kid had been allowed to take the puppy to his new foster home.
She shook her hands hard, working the kinks out of her fingers. Theo’s cell phone had all the latest bells and whistles, including a touchscreen keyboard, but her fingers weren’t used to working on such a small surface. After a half-hour of typing, scrolling, and clicking, sharp twinges of buzzing pain were starting to shoot through her fingers.
“Which email was your favorite?” Theo’s question brought her back down to earth.
“Huh?”
“Those emails you responded to.” He nodded in the direction of the phone. “Whose story was your favorite? Besides the boy with the puppy, of course.”
She nibbled her lip, thinking back. “Well, let’s see. I loved the one from the teenage mom with the little kid. You gave her a full scholarship to college. She’s studying engineering now, right?”
“Yep, computer engineering. Straight As, too,” Theo said. “Giaan’s parents kicked her out when she got knocked up as a senior in high school. She ended up at a Courant Foundation homeless shelter in Sacramento, which was where she found out about the scholarship program. Her application blew me away. But when I called the shelter to tell them she’d won a full scholarship, she’d already taken off. I left word for her to call me, or email, but…” Theo left the sentence hanging.
“So what happened?” Chessie asked.
“She never called, never emailed.”
“How’d you find her?”
Theo stirred on the couch, adjusted his position by bringing both arms up high, his casts framing his head. “I drove to Sacramento and combed through all the homeless shelters and back streets looking for her. After five days I finally found her living in a homeless community, gigantically pregnant, alone, and with holes in her shoes, shivering in some big cardboard box.”
Theo had spent five days digging around back alleys looking for a pregnant girl? Theo Courant? The same conceited rich brat she’d grown up with?
Chessie suddenly was struck by something: She had never really gotten to know Theo. Because he’d always been such an egotistical show-off, and a wealthy one at that, she’d assumed he had no depth and had written him off completely. But tonight he’d revealed to her a side of himself that had taken her by surprise.
This side of Theo she could actually like.
Possibly.
Maybe.
There was still the problem that Theo owned the largest ego she’d ever met.
And yet, she knew full well what some of those back streets of Sacramento were like: filthy, drug-ridden, and dangerous, and Theo willingly gone there to find someone who deserved a second chance.
“Giaan’s in her third year in college and already a few engineering firms are looking at hiring her,” Theo said. “The baby’s about three now. She sends me pictures.”
“You seem to really enjoy this work,” she commented as she pulled the wheelchair out from the corner of the room and angled it next to Theo. She could hardly see straight. Most definitely time for bed.
“Best part of my career,” he said, scooching to the edge of the couch and reaching for the wheelchair, “is when I hear from someone we’ve helped a while ago and things are still going great for them. Like those emails we responded to tonight. Fills me up.”
She smiled down on him. He’d closed his eyes, and his honey brown lashes lay against his cheeks. For a brief second his face relaxed.
Then his eyes flashed open. Met hers. Sparkled. And as he hauled himself into the wheelchair, he added, “Second best part of my career is that there are a ton of hot chicks who come to the fundraisers or who volunteer to help on projects.”
She groaned. Theo was back in form.
So maybe he wasn’t as shallow as she’d once thought, but he was still Theo Courant—pain-in-the-neck, self-centered rich boy. Thank god their arrangement came with absolutely no strings attached.
Because who would ever want to be attached to Theo?
Two weeks later, Theo relaxed against the headboard of Chessie’s bed, waiting for her to finish her nighttime ritual. Which mostly meant watching her brush her hair. One hundred strokes, each and every night. He would have gone nuts after stroke two, but Chessie had told him early on that her great-grandmother Louisa used to brush her hair for her every night. A family tradition. Nice. Comforting, he figured. The bond between Chessie and Louisa had been strong, and brushing her hair seemed to make Chessie feel connected to the woman she’d adored.
A sharp, shooting pain radiated through his wrist up to his shoulder. The day had been long and productive. Voice activation software helped him tend to the various tasks he needed to complete during the day, but wearing casts on both wrists did a number on his shoulders. At least he enjoyed his make-shift office—Chessie’s living room couch and end-table.
Mostly, he liked the view, he thought wolfishly. With matching bay windows on either side of her living room, Theo had a clear and unobstructed view of all Chessie’s activities whenever she was outside—both in the front and the back yards. Which was how he’d spent the moments of his days when he wasn’t consumed with work…watching Chessie.
He kinda felt like a stalker, but hey, the way she moved about the flowerbeds with a sensual grace, barefoot and braless, turned him on in a way porn once did.
Often she was in the kitchen, pulling together the final orders for her big launch for Sweet Meadow Scents. When she stayed inside, he didn’t get to watch her work, but he could hear her muttering under her breath and could smell the aromatic scents waft through the air as she poured essential oils into bath and body products.
Today was
one of his lucky days. She’d said she was overwhelmed with her business’s national launch and needed some garden time. He’d been able to spend most of the day watching Chessie as she moved about the front garden, tending to the lavender plants, pruning, trimming, and chatting away, as if the plants were listening.
“Hey,” he said as she brushed her hair. “Were you talking to your plants today?”
She set the hairbrush down on the side table. “The lavenders, you mean?”
Her fingers reached for the buttons on her blouse and slowly began unbuttoning. He’d come to love this moment, the moment when Chessie would undress. She’d focus on him as they talked, allowing her hands to strip her of her clothes, almost as if undressing were a subconscious act. He’d grow hard at just the sight of her bared shoulder. No strip tease for her—no, Chessie could bring him to the point of no return without artifice, without attempt.
“You are so very beautiful,” he said.
She laughed, lightly, as if not quite believing him. “I always talk to the lavenders,” she said. “Louisa named hers, and I’ve carried on the tradition. Each time I plant a new one, I christen it with a name.”
“What are their names?” he asked, absently, still focused on her movements.
“Old-fashioned names, of course. Minerva, Ginny, Dottie—the last two lavenders I planted I named Gertie and Bridy. Minerva and a few of her sisters are out front.”
He watched her with eagle eyes as she donned an emerald green silk robe. He liked that robe. Liked to feel the sensation of Chessie’s skin under it as he brushed the tips of his fingers—the only part of his hands he had access to—over her body. “So why name plants?” he asked. She stepped into the bathroom, leaving the door open. He watched her move about while she completed her nighttime ritual.
“Plants are alive, like all of us. They respond to voices, to our positive energy.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously.” She stuck the head of the toothbrush into her mouth, swirled it around. How someone could be sexy brushing their teeth was beyond him, but he loved seeing Chessie with a toothbrush hanging out of her mouth. Loved what watching her did to his body.
She continued speaking, her words blurred by toothpaste. Her eyes danced; the topic obviously interested her. “Positive vibrations,” she said through a mouthful of bubbles. “I doubt they experience emotion the way we do, but plants are alive. They deserve respect. That’s why I use only sustainable products.” She rinsed her mouth out. “Trees and plants that are used in my products get harvested, sure, but at least the harvesting is done in a sustainable manner. No rainforests being destroyed, no plant species dying out from overconsumption.”
The first time she’d discussed her business with him, he’d been bored to tears. Now, though? Now he loved hearing the lilt of her voice. Loved watching the way her mouth moved. Enjoyed learning about how to take care of the earth through her eyes.
With sensuous movements, Chessie creamed moisturizer over her face, neck, and shoulders. Her hands drifted toward her breasts, parting the robe only wide enough to let her hands inside, not wide enough to give him a glimpse of her perfect breasts. She peeked at him, caught him drooling like a teenage boy, and smiled.
A wanton smile, he thought. A smile that said he’d be getting some any minute now.
Theo gulped.
“You should think about using sustainable products when the Courant Foundation does those Build to Live projects. Make sure you’re not using lumber from old-growth trees.” She tightened the lid on the moisturizer and placed it back in the brushed nickel cabinet.
“I hadn’t thought about it,” he said. One of The Courant Foundation’s projects was to help people who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford a home to build one of their own. For a while now he’d made sure that the homes were energy efficient, but he’d never thought of what happened to the forests that supplied the lumber for the projects.
“Think of all the good you’d do the world. Think of all the happy forests.” She sauntered toward him, deliberately sashaying her curvy hips in a most delectable fashion.
Making a forest happy had never been near the top of his list of priorities; however, over the last couple of weeks, making Chessie happy had become priority numero uno. If she wanted him to go green, he’d go green.
Hell, he’d go purple if she asked.
What she’d said about going green on the Courant Foundation’s Build to Live projects made sense. The charitable efforts put forth by the Foundation had always centered on health, welfare, and the arts—in short, on people. Environmental issues were considered, of course, but weren’t forefront in the structure of the Foundation. However, he realized, while he couldn’t revise the structure of the giving program, he could incorporate consideration for the environment in each project the Foundation took on.
Chessie had a unique way of viewing life, a view that was beginning to rub off on him. He had always done his part in protecting the environment, recycling whenever he remembered, turning off lights when he left the room. Heck, he even started a community garden project with the Courant Foundation years ago. But he never had thought about plants and trees as living things before. Not until Chessie.
Maybe he should name the one forlorn houseplant he owned, the jade tree that lived in his San Francisco townhome.
Fred. That’s it, he could call it Fred.
* * *
Even this early in the morning, Theo was pleased to notice, Delilah’s Diner hummed with energy. Diners could be an unofficial barometer of how well a town’s economy stood. And given the crowded interior of Delilah’s, the town was doing very well. And god—it smelled so deliciously of bacon.
When Chessie told him the night before that had errands to do in Meadowview, Theo had bugged her to drop him off at the diner so he could have a real, all-American breakfast. He loved that Chessie made him a meal every morning, but she tended to eat on the healthy side and had flat-out refused to make bacon, claiming she wasn’t going to add to his cholesterol. According to her, he should eat muesli and drink kombucha.
Yeah, right. No way was he drinking fermented tea.
He missed bacon.
“I’ll pick you up in about an hour, okay?” Chessie said, shoving a macramé bag over her shoulder—a bag that oddly went quite well with her calf-high electric blue Doc Martens and dress that he could have sworn was in the painting American Gothic—then set about rearranging the silverware in front of him. “Delilah’s bringing you coffee, cooled down, with milk added, and a straw, just the way I told her to.”
Early on, Chessie had figured out a number of ways he could care for himself with the cumbersome casts on, and apparently had made it her mission to make sure others knew her tricks and tips.
“And I asked her to cut up your pancakes the way I do so you don’t have to flail about with a knife and fork,” she added.
“I’m not a baby,” he said, shooting her what he hoped was a serious expression.
She just laughed. “You kinda are. But really, I just don’t want you bugging Delilah with all your insane requests.”
He held up his casts. “As soon as these are off, I’m out of your hair. And out of your life, if you’d prefer.”
“Don’t get dramatic. Oh, and do you want—”
Whatever Chessie was going to ask was interrupted by the ringing of his cell phone. He’d found that if he kept it in his front shirt pocket that he could access it easily enough with his limited dexterity, but now, as he pulled it out and noticed it was his sister calling, the damned thing fell on the floor. He had to wait for Chessie to pick it up, click on, and prop it against the salt and pepper shaker so he could Skype with Sadie. God, he hated this. Hated being so out of control of his own life. Hated being dependent on anyone.
“Hey, sis,” he said, then nodded to Chessie as she motioned that she was headed out.
“Are you at Delilah’s?” Sadie asked, peering forward into the phone. Next
to her, Ethan crowded onto the screen.
“Yep,” Theo said, leaning back so his sister could see the interior. “Miss it?”
“Oh god,” she said, sighing, “I miss Delilah’s pancakes. And bacon. And I miss Meadowview so much. I want to come home. I love New York, especially in the fall, but I’m stuck in Ethan’s townhome, on bed rest. I can’t even have sex!”
Ethan burst out laughing and Theo quickly glanced around, hoping none of the patrons had heard his sister’s announcement, and pretty sure his own face was a violent shade of red. No one, but no one, needed to hear about their sister’s sex life. Fortunately, Delilah was no where to be seen, and the closest group was two tables away.
“Speaking of—”
“Speaking of sex? What, you’re not going to tell me you’re sleeping with Chessie, are you?” Sadie said, smiling brightly.
“No. God. I mean no—” He sputtered to a stop and took a deep breath, trying to regroup.
“No, you’re not sleeping with Chessie?”
“Let your brother speak,” Ethan said, although he laughed as he said it.
“Thank you,” Theo said, attempting a semblance of dignity. “What I was trying to say was that no, we’re not speaking of sex. We’re speaking of you coming home. How long after the baby is born are you going to stay in New York?”
“Oh, wow. For a moment I thought you were trying to tell me something about you and Chessie. Um…I think we’ll wait a month or two to travel. Maybe even come back by train. By then you’ll be back in San Francisco.” Sadie put on a pouty face. “I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you, too,” he said absently, still a little focused on what his sister had just said. Would she be upset if she knew he was sleeping with her best friend? He hoped not. But he’d promised Chessie he’d keep what they were doing between them.
Movement next to him caught his attention. He turned to see the pale, fifty-ish woman with long dreadlocks and wearing Birkenstock sandals, standing next to him, coffee pot in hand. Delilah. One of Meadowview’s favorite business owners. Part hippy, part genius with anything bacon.
Tempting the One (Meadowview Heat 4; The Meadowview 4) Page 9